Resources in this Episode:

Christine Schlonski [0:04]
Hi Gorgeous, this is episode number 021.

Andrea Waltz [0:08]
Hi, this is Andrea Waltz and you’re listening to Heart Sells! with Christine Schlonski.

Christine Schlonski [0:13]
I am so happy you’re here today a Welcome and I am really, really excited about our world-class guest today Andrea Waltz. Before we dive in, make sure you check out the Sales Journaling Prompts you get them in the Success Library at christineschlonski.com and you can just download them and use them to change your sales-mindset into a sales-success-mindset and that is basically what we are going into with Andrea. She is the go for no person if you have been listening to the podcast her book: GO for NO, Yes the Destination – was mentioned by Bob Burg in episode 003 and I’m super excited that I managed to get her on the show. So let me give you a little bit background information on Andrea.

Christine Schlonski [1:15]
Andrea Waltz is the co-founder of Courage Crafters Inc. and co-author of the best-selling book Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There. Go for No! is a short, powerful fable specifically for organizations and sales professionals of any kind who must overcome fear of failure and rejection to be successful. The book has sold over 400,000 copies and after hitting number one on Amazon selling list in 2010 remains in the top ranks of sales books today. Since launching the company with her husband and business partner Richard Fenton, Andrea has built a brand around the phrase Go for No! using the book as a lounge off point. she produced a “documentary” style movie interviewing 58 top achievers on how they utilized failure and rejection to reach their goals and dreams. Most recently, she is teaching “Go for No” through an online training and coaching course. She also has spoken all over the US and the United Kingdom and she is a frequent keynote speaker at entrepreneurial and cooperate sales meetings and conventions. She is considered a top sales influencer online, being a featured on a curated list by Hubspot, Salesforce.com, Marketcircle, Live Hive, and many others. In case Andrea’s not working, she writes fiction with her co-writing partner/husband and enjoys watching some creepy on Netflix while having a glass of good red wine. I’m so happy you’re here today. Andrea, welcome to Heart Sells! podcast.

Andrea Waltz [3:23]
Thank you, Christine and I am so excited to be talking with you today.

Christine Schlonski [3:26]
Yeah, and you have such an amazing topic that probably touches every single person that is listening. And your best selling book Go for No! is, had such a big impact in the market that you even did a documentary where you interviewed 58 top achievers on how they utilize failure and rejection to actually reach their goals and dreams. Right? Because so many people they just stop. Right? They are paralyzed, they can’t move forward. So everything about sales motivation and helping people to reprogram how they think about rejection is like your thing. But I’m quite sure you didn’t start there. What inspired you to go down this rejection path?

Andrea Waltz [4:21]
Well, yeah, I didn’t start there at all. The idea that I would be doing this today, it seems very strange to me, because when I was in college, I was studying criminal justice. I wanted to be a crime scene investigator before they made any TV shows about that. And then I met my now husband, Richard. And he and I met him actually when we were in the corporate world. And he taught the Go for No philosophy to me. Really, by telling me a story of something very simple that happened to him simple but profound. And fundamentally, it was he was working in a men’s wear store years and years earlier, and he had a district manager, a guy by the name of Harold come in and visit the store. And Richard actually was a pretty bad salesperson. I mean, he was he was a good salesperson, but he struggled, he, he struggled, and he actually thought that they were going to fire him. And so the district manager came in. And on that same day, Richard ended up helping a customer who came in and said, he wanted to buy an entire wardrobe of clothing. And Richard took care of this man. And he sold him all of these clothes: suits, and pants and sport coat and ties, shirts, and all of these things. And he had this amazing sale. And now he’s thinking that Harold is going to congratulate him on his fabulous sale. And Harold instead says, What did that customer say no to? And Richard said, What do you mean? I sold that guy, all of these things, thinking that he was going to be rewarded. And Harold said, Richard, out of curiosity. I’m just, I just want to know, what did that customer say no to? And Richard said, you know, Harold, he didn’t say no to anything. Everything I showed that man he purchased. And then Harold said, Well, then, how did you know he was done? And then Harold proceeded to tell Richard, you are a good salesperson, but your fear of the word no is going to kill you. If you could just get over that. I think you could become one of the great ones. And Richard says, he went home that night, two letters from greatness NO. He changed the way he thought about the word no, he ended up becoming an award-winning salesperson. He was like I said, not that great. And so when we met years later, and he told this story to me, I had this epiphany myself because I realized that I didn’t like to hear the word no. So to I had to kind of tell that story, because that was kind of the lightning moment for me as well. And I, I said, well, that’s amazing. And I can do that too. And I did. And I used Go for NO in my corporate job. And then eventually, we both quit and launched our own speaking and training company teaching this message. And as I’ve taught it over the years, what I found is that everyone, it’s the very, very rare person who doesn’t hate that word, NO, who doesn’t fear failure, who doesn’t fear rejection. So I feel like if I can help people just build their courage a little bit, just try and take a chance to hear the word NO that they can get the yeses that they’re seeking. And so I’m just super passionate. But it all started with actually Richard sharing that one story with me.

Christine Schlonski [7:34]
Yeah, amazing. Yeah. And you built like, a whole brand around it. And people can find you goforno.com, right? Look, there’s an online course. So if you want to dive in, you can go really, really deep. And I’m just so fascinated because people so often miss that important point that they can learn to handle the word NO by shifting how to think about it. Right? So they sabotage themselves, especially in sales. And I remember when I started out years ago, and high ticket event sales over the phone, like calling general managers, owners of companies and, you know, luckily, I was I was not experienced. So I listened to what I was told, which really helped in the process. But still, the first noes that always felt like a rejection, not for the product but like for my person.

Andrea Waltz [8:37]
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it does come across as a personal rejection. You can’t help it. And salespeople. I think people who gravitate towards sales are people-people, right? We like be like having conversations. We like people. And so when we experience that rejection, it is I think, even more easy for us to take it personally. Because we’re, we want to build those relationships. We want to have a connection.

Christine Schlonski [9:04]
Yeah, yeah, I think where it even gets well, where feels maybe more intense is when you have your own company. So when you are an entrepreneur or solopreneur, and you come up with all these great ideas, and you’re so excited to give your gifts to the world, and then you take a couple steps. And, you know, you get the NO. Do you have any good advice where these people can start to shift around this feeling?

Andrea Waltz [9:38]
Yeah, that’s so true. And in fact, you mentioned the documentary, we talked to an artist, people who make these very interesting, very interesting modern sculptures. And some of what they did was almost modern furniture, things that you would find it almost looked like Alison in Wonderland, these, these dressers that were bright colored. And, and they had all these wood, interesting edges and design and we found them amazing. But you could see that some people would walk by their display and that they were at a few different art fairs that we went to, and just had no interest. I mean, and it’s a big no. And sometimes people would walk by and even comment, right? Like, oh, that’s horrible. I would never have that in my house. That is the ultimate rejection of your art. And I think any entrepreneur is creating art, you’re creating ideas, like you said, and bit and some kind of business to help people. And so it becomes very personal, the shift, I would suggest, and it’s not an easy one. But it really is to embrace people’s I guess you would say, right to an opinion. And you really have to love and appreciate the no, and people actually not liking you, your art and your what you put out in the world, you have to learn to appreciate that. And it sounds counterintuitive because we want to fight that and say it’s mean and it’s hurtful. When you can shift in your head and say, You know what, it’s okay. And in fact, it’s good. Because when someone does not like what I’m putting out in the world, someone else will be all that more attracted, and fall in love with what I’m putting out in the world. And that’s just how it works. And I’ll give you an example. It’s kind of funny, actually, we wrote a book a few years ago called million dollar a year was for the network marketing industry. And that book did okay. But I remember going into Amazon. com, because all authors like to read their reviews. And went in and someone had written a review, I think they gave us one star. And they said This book is not worth the paper that it’s printed on. And then it went in went on to say how bad the book was, and it felt like a punch in the gut initially, right? That’s your initial reaction is, oh, it that’s so painfull, it’s painful because this book is ours, we created it came from us. So you just really are saying almost, you feel like you’re a bad person, or you are a personal failure. And then I did what I’m to what I’m trying to explain here, which is I step back and I said, you know, this is this person’s right and choice, and it’s okay. And I need to love it. And so I responded, which I normally don’t respond to negative reviews on Amazon, but I felt compelled to respond. And I wrote this person back and I said, You know, I appreciate your comment. And I completely understand and you know what, my husband Richard and I went to a movie once Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, very famous movie, it got, I think it got Academy, it got one Academy Awards or something. And after about a half an hour, we walked out, we hated it. It was just not our cup of tea. So in a roundabout sort of way, I’m in this response. I said, I said, so I hated that movie. A lot of people loved that movie. So I understand everybody deserves and they have the right to their opinion. Sorry, you didn’t like the book, but I appreciate it. And I wasn’t expecting this to happen. But this person actually responded a few weeks later and said, You know what, I reread the book and I’m changing my review. It’s actually really good. And I guess they changed the review to four stars or something. Now, I wasn’t even expecting that. And that wasn’t my goal. But I felt really good just responding. And instead of wanting to fight this person, or instead of being hurt, I tried to make an empowering and say, I appreciate the fact that you didn’t like it. And that’s okay, I can, I can survive. And there’s lots of art that I don’t like. It doesn’t mean that the person who created it as bad or that they’re a failure, it’s actually says everything about me, my dislike for a particular movie is based on my history, and beliefs and likes and dislikes, and has nothing to do with the people that created it. So it is a work in progress. It does take some time. But I think in those moments you send out love and appreciation instead of holding on to that hurt. And that pain.

Christine Schlonski [14:08]
Yeah, oh, I love the story. And I so can see it. Because when we look at ourselves, when we walk around, how often is it that we see something that we don’t really like. You know, it could be art, or, you know, how often might we end up in a restaurant, but the food is just not as great as we wanted it to be? So there’s like, basically, every single day, we will find something that we are not in love with.

Andrea Waltz [14:40]
Yes,

Christine Schlonski [14:40]
constant thing. Exactly. So shifting the perspective and seeing well, that happens to other people was my products, which doesn’t make them a bad person, which doesn’t make me a bad person. It’s just the way it is. And I can move on because it has nothing to do with me personally, then I think it will become easier.

Andrea Waltz [15:03]
Absolutely. And the more you appreciate those differences in people. And you’re right, it’s everywhere. We’re constantly making judgments about food, and what’s around us and people’s clothing. And we oftentimes just judge very quickly and superficially we look at something and we decide, do I like that or not. And it’s all based on our own opinion, and has nothing to do and the person shouldn’t feel bad because one of my other favorite analogies is, if we, you and I both saw a woman walking down the street and address that was white with bright cherries covering the dress and, and a big red floppy hat. And if I said, Oh, my gosh, that outfit is ridiculous. And I told this to this woman. And then you said simultaneously, your outfit is amazing. I love it. Well, who’s right? And should she feel bad? Because I don’t approve, but yet good, because you approve. And really, what it comes down to two is almost a neutral, she really shouldn’t be paying attention to either one of us, quite frankly, your great opinion, my negative one, because it’s just, it’s, it’s ours. And so the sooner that I think we just get to a place where we create what we want to create, because we’re in love with it, and it’s our passion. And, and we that’s what we want to do. And we don’t need that outside validation. But we do want to get that creation out into the world.

Christine Schlonski [16:25]
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I don’t know who said that. But that was something that really stayed with me, another person’s opinion is none of your business.

Andrea Waltz [16:38]
Yes. So true.

Christine Schlonski [16:40]
I think it really, really helps. So if you’re an entrepreneur, you just create whatever you want to create. I mean, obviously, if you’re an entrepreneur, you want to create something that you know, the market also wants. If you only do something that you want, then it might be more of a hobby, but you want to have a look like what is or who is your ideal customer, and I you serving them with your products, and that makes the journey easier. So could you touch a little bit on that if people hear NO too often, or they perceive that they hear no, too often? Which could be? Well, first of all, they haven’t asked often enough, right? So some people, for example, say, Well, you know, I’m getting so many no’s. And then when you say, well, how many noes that you get 10? And then, you know, I, I’m sure that if you are a successful salesperson, you have to ask at least 100 times.

Andrea Waltz [17:42]
Absolutely. I think there’s two things going on with the NO. And one of them is a quality NO, and one of them is a quantity NO. And I find we find that most of the time you were exactly right. We’re not we don’t have the quantity going for us. We’re not telling our story to enough people. And so we think that things should be easier. And we should be able to tell our story to five people get four or five yeses out of those five people and call it a day. If you so the numbers and we don’t like the phrase sales is a numbers game. But in fact, it is kind of a numbers game. People aren’t numbers, but say it is a numbers game. And so you do have to have that quantity working for you. You can’t talk to five people and hope to get five yeses, no one is 100 for 100, right? Or even I mean, in the sales world, 30% is considered in baseball, it’s the same thing. It’s it’s three out of 10 is concert excellent. So if you want to get a higher number of yeses, fundamentally, what GO for NO! means is you need to increase your opportunities for NO. So if you want to get 300 yeses over the year, you’re going to have to hear several thousand noes. That’s just how the numbers going to play out.

Andrea Waltz [19:00]
Now to your other point, which is, well, what about the quality and this is where you do have to analyze and you do have to be strategic and you do have to say, Well, I’m not, I’m getting so many noes. And it feels like and I’ve got my quantity up now. Now it’s starting to feel like there’s another kind of problem. And that is where you have to dig in and start asking why and what’s going on? And are you are you hearing knows early in the process? So maybe there’s something about your initial contact? Or if it’s online and initial sales letter, initial email? Or are you moving people through the process, and then at the very end, you’re getting noes. So there’s something more in the back end. Now, the interesting thing is, if the quantity is not there, then asking those questions, again, is very difficult, because your sample sizes, so small, one or two people doesn’t, you know, I, I had a meeting with one or two people and at the end of the conversation, they both said, No, well, that’s not a big enough sample size to say that you have a problem closing, that’s just interesting information, you have to start talking to more people to where you can then start saying, why, why is this and can you get some information from the people that you’re working with? Sometimes it’s sometimes it’s easy to get up, get confused. I think as entrepreneurs and Richard and I get confused as well. And it really helps to step back. One of the things that happened to us with an we write a lot of books, and it took us years to step back on a couple books and say, why didn’t this book go? Why did Go for NO!, do so? Well, on a couple of the other books that we wrote didn’t and we had some epiphany is where we realized, wow, these books were good stories, but they weren’t really solving a problem, the customer would see the book, but not really understand what problem we were solving. And so I think that as entrepreneurs, we have to have clarity, as you said, Have your target market and also be very clear yourself what kind of transformation you’re trying to help people through and work on and constantly work on improving the communication of that and that often will help your yeses and your noes your no quotient but start getting out there and telling your story more that that is my number one piece of advice initially.

Christine Schlonski [21:25]
Yeah. Yeah. And also what I see a lot of people not doing is keeping track like knowing the numbers to how many people did I did I tell my story. How many people could I invite for a conversation around my products? And how many people said yes, how many people said no, and a lot of people don’t have the slightest idea of where to look for the numbers. So they can actually set themselves up for success. because if I know I need to speak to 10 people to make one or two deals or win you, customers, then I can scale the whole thing,

Andrea Waltz [22:07]
Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s where it’s, I like to say it’s art meets commerce. That’s the big challenge for entrepreneurs is we are we all love creativity, we like to be artists in our own way of whatever product or service we’re creating. And that has to to cross into commerce. And when I say commerce, I mean selling and hearing more noes to get more yeses and paying attention to your numbers and being somebody who can look at the data and try to glean lessons from that data. So art meeting commerce is a powerful equation. You can’t overdo on either one. Right? You want to try to have both in a balance

Christine Schlonski [22:53]
Yeah, that’s really nice. Well said I like that are meeting commerce. It’s something that sticks. So do your Do you remember when you did your very first sale.

Andrea Waltz [23:12]
The funny thing is our very first sale with the very first thing we ever sold in our business was a book and it was actually we wrote a book called Unlocking the secrets of retail magic. And we sent it out to and maybe we didn’t, it’s been literally 20 years. But I remember our first order came through the fax machine. And it was for $8 and 20 cents. And it was one of those books, someone actually bought one of the books, I think we sent a press release and an order form. And I actually remember the guy’s name and I remember the company and everything it was we were so excited. I’ve never been so excited to make $8 and 20 cents, it probably cost us a couple thousand dollars to make $8, 20 cents. But it’s so encouraging just to have that happen. And I don’t remember our very first Oh, no, that’s not sure. The very first seminar we ever did was for at the time it was called New York and company. It’s a division of women’s women’s brand of clothing called Express. And we believe that was our first actual training seminar. Because that’s what we were selling. And we had no success stories to share. They really went on out on a limb to hire us. But the I will say that probably the thing that we did successfully that we did well, and believe me, we have made so many mistakes, many of them repeatedly. So I am not speaking from on high here. But we niche down in our business. We, when we first launched our company, we focused on retail organizations that were large, and we wanted to do training for them. And that’s who we targeted when you talk about target customer.

Andrea Waltz [25:06]
So it we made it a very easy decision, I guess because we really specialized and we weren’t trying to be everything to everyone. And that today I because we look at some of the heroes in the industry in the coaching, training, personal development industry, or even broader in the media. And you look at someone like the Kardashians, or some of these people and their every, they’re kind of like, they can do anything, they can release a makeup line and they can write a children’s book. And they can make beer and images, they can do whatever they want, right, they get and you say, Well, I want to do a wide variety of things to a wide group of people. NO niche down find, find your core audience is going to really resonate with what you have, even though it’s a small group, and then later, you can grow from there. And so what has to us and our business was we focused on the retail industry for a few years, and then the thing that they liked the best and this is something that you learn being in business for a while, as your customers sometimes tell you what they love. And the thing that resonated with our customers was Go for NO! that’s what they loved. So that’s when we made the transition. And we said, our company is going to be around Go for NO!

Christine Schlonski [26:23]
Oh, amazing. Amazing. Yeah. I’m so looking forward to continue this conversation with you. That’s wonderful. So to wrap up, where can people find you,

Andrea Waltz [26:33]
They can get everything that they need it gofono.com and it’s not the number so it’s goforno.com.

Christine Schlonski [26:39]
That’s pretty simple. So thank you so much for the interview. I am looking forward to the next one.

Christine Schlonski [26:48]
Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I found it really inspirational, especially the story Andrea shared at the beginning where the client bought everything that was presented to him and the question of the manager was, well, what did he not buy? And I just love the way of thinking like was there even more opportunity to make a sale and how could Richard have gone for it. So I hope that you can put this model into your business to make sure you serve your clients fully not just 50% or 80 but fully which will not only support your clients but will also support your business. I was super pumped that Andrea was here today and if you want to hop over to christineschlonski.com you find all the show notes, the transcript, the resources obviously all the ways you can connect with Andrea.by sites going goforno.com. I have set up for you all the links to connect was her and also an invitation to join the Sales Success Library where you get my sales journaling prompts so you can start shifting your mindset to a sale success mindset. Have fun Gorgeous wherever you are in this beautiful world make sure you tune in for the next episode best is to just subscribe so you never miss an episode. And yeah, have a wonderful day wherever you are. And bye for now.